Geek Sanity Tip: Make Everyone Run the Same Software

Much like how doctor’s get bombarded with medical questions, being the alpha geek in any family or group of friends means you’ll get asked questions about computers. There’s only one way to stay sane: get everyone you know to run the same software.

Outlook vs Gmail

Case in point, I’ve had to support Microsoft Outlook for over a decade now even though the last time I used it was in 1997. Even though I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird, and then Gmail I’ve had this albatross of questions hanging around my neck. If I could convince everyone I know to switch to gmail I wouldn’t have to worry about problems like:

Filesharing

I was a long time Azeurus bittorrent user, but I’ve found it hard to explaining to anyone else how to use the program, not to mention how poorly it performs. uTorrent is so much simplier to use, and it is so much easier to explain to other people how to use it. These are the uTorrent settings I use to work well with Rogers Canada.

uTorrent seems to work better than Azureus or the original Bit Torrent client, and I really like how it defaults to selecting individual files in a torrent to download. It also seems to have much less virii than the older quality P2P applications like Limewire and Soulseek.

There are quite a few legitimate uses of bittorrent. A lot of excellent free software is distributed using bittorrent, and as older movies, books and music comes into the public domain it is being hosted on bittorrent networks. People are sharing their public domain podcasts and video casts using bittorrent as well.

Norton Antivirus vs Anything Else

The other big problem I run into as the computer tech person is “my computer is slow”. The culprit is an easy find: Norton Antivirus. Norton Antivirus is a virus because it is more detrimental to your computer performance than actually having a virus. Nobody likes Norton Antivirus.

We’ve been trying out AVG Free as an alternative, but ran into issues with how user unfriendly it is (finding virii in the Recycling Bin, finding virii in the Outlook Deleted Trash and the difficulty in deleting the virii). Leave a comment if you have any suggestions of which antivirus to use for casual home users who aren’t tech saavy.

I’ve even gone so far as to switch my completely non-technical husband (who was still using AOL for email/browsing until a year ago) and my history professor closest friend over to Ubuntu Linux. I still have headaches with their computers, but they are *reasonable* headaches now.

Now, if I could just convince the college where I teach to switch to Ubuntu…

Just went through this last weekend with a friend. Her machine got infected, and I insisted she not use Norton but try McAfee (a mild improvement). I run ClamXav (Leopard) with no probs, and never had virus problems with McAfee (properly configured) under Windows. Easy solution: don’t use the web, or don’t use Windows.

I used to use NAV simply because it came along with my laptop purchase. By the time that I realised it was causing most of the performance problems, I decided to make a change.

I researched around a couple of softwares, used Kaspersky, which I found to be a lot more light-weighted. Seriously, it’s like a load off your CPU and mind.

By the time the Kaspersky trial ran out, I then had a go at NOD32, and that’s when I realised it wasn’t Kaspersky that was so great, it was how crappy NAV actually was.

So yes, NOD32. The only bad-talking has been about its complex UI. It would be fine for most users. For users with less knowledge, there’s also ESET Smart Security (by the same company). When you’re running NOD32, you don’t feel it running at the background at all. And when you plug-in an USB drive that has a minor virus, it’s picked up straight away.

I’ve been using TrendMicro for about 10 years and like it a lot better than Norton. It can be a resource hog during scanning, but I’ve found it to be the best tool for stopping not-so-tech-savy users from getting viruses/spyware in the first place.

Have to say by far my favorite is Kapersky. I used AVG for years and raved about it but the minute I tried Kapersky I was hooked. For me and my clients it is the only way to go. Oh, and one more thing. There is no other program for email than Gmail. The end.

I use Norton’s AV and love it, but if you buy a suite and blindly install everything, well you get what you asked for. And I use Outlook 2007 and all of my computers are sync’d, I do have about 5 g-mail accounts, but they all dump to one, then dump to Outlook, works great. Personally I can’t stand web based e-mail. But I totally agree with you on all other points.

I don’t use an Antivirus program, I use firefox. To the best of my knowledge most spyware adware virus garbage comes through internet explorer 6. Don’t use IE. I ran only Firefox for about 2 years straight, downloaded AVG, checked my computer and had no problems whatsoever.

I also don’t use firewall. I have even turned off my anti virus software. I depend on Firefox and anti-malware scans since time to time. So far, so good ! No problems. The common sense in browsing is the key. Do not click on weird stuff. Do not follow “interesting” links.

I’ve been using the 2003 edition, but then one day I installed the 2008 edition. After two weeks of pain, I reverted back to the 2003 edition, and have been happy ever since. Well, that was until I got a Mac..

I ran AVG for a few years but got fed up the user interface – took ages to complete the simplest of tasks and found some crap was getting through its net. Switched to Avast and have never had a problem since.
I gace up on Norton years ago. The cost was never justified – I believe they create most of the viruses themselves to bring in the business.

Thank you! I have been looking for this information all day now. My pc is not running like it should and I need to figure out how to fix it soon. I have bookmarked your post so others can find it too on digg.

For set it and forget it, i would go with Avast or MSE, for those wanting a bit more extra security and options, i might suggest Comodo, its interesting in that it comes with a firewall too, cool bit of software, though can be a bit awkward to configure sometimes.

I like the comparison you’ve made. For my online work, I always use gmail because of the built in messenger, online documents and no need to download features. As for the browser, I still go for FF because of so many plugins that can use for work.

This is all fine and dandy. You can choose your friends. But in the professional world you will be forced to support intransigent and retarded users who insist that Outlook 97, ftp, etc are the only clients they can possibly deal with. All their archives are in PST format, and when you are called on to restore the email that “you lost” they will deny having checked the little box in the POP configuration that deletes their email off the server when it is downloaded.